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Fish-Watch Project Report June, 2003

Dennis Polack sent in a photograph of the
blackspot goatfish, Parupeneus pleurostigma, SSF 196.9. Dennis
photographed it at Sodwana earlier this year, it was previously known south to
Maputo. Jack Randall, an ichthyologist based in Honolulu, who is revising the
goatfish family, will be using Dennis’ Sodwana photograph as the basis for this
new distribution record for South Africa.

Video footage taken from the underwater submersible, Jago, at Sodwana,
gave us the first record of the rockcod, Epinephelus retouti, the
red-tipped rockcod, for Africa. It is known from the islands of the
Indo-Pacific.
NEW DISTRIBUTION RECORD FOR AFRICA - PHOTOGRAPHED AT PONTA MAMOLI,
MOZAMBIQUE, BY FISHWATCH MEMBER, DENNIS POLACK.

This snapper looks like Lutjanus vitta which was previously reported from in our area – the
western Indian Ocean [WIO] – from India [by Day in the 1870s and illustrated in
black and white] & the Seychelles [by JLB & Margaret Smith]. We do not
have any WIO photographs nor can we find any in the literature, so as well as
being a new record, this photo will be particularly useful. The fish does not
have exactly the same pattern as Lutjanus vitta from the Pacific or
eastern Indian Ocean. The oblique lines above the LL are wavy not straight &
there appear to be fewer of them than the Pacific specimens we have seen. Nor
does it have the yellow tail [caudal] fin of the Pacific specimens. It also has
a yellow belly not apparent on Pacific fish. We are assuming, until we get a
specimen, that it is a WIO colour pattern variation rather than a new sister
species of Lutjanus vitta.

Sally Polack photographed a sailfin goby at Ponta Mamoli, Mozambique. World
goby experts, Helen Larson from Australia and Rick Winterbottom from Canada are
not sure what it is but think it might be a species new to science, possibly a Vanderhorstia or Tomiyamichthys.